I've been loading pistol cartridges (40S&W, 10mm, 9mm) for about a year. Two months ago, I started loading .308. So far, everything has gone perfectly.

Now, I'm loading .223 for my AR and Mini-14.

When I look into the primer pockets of LC headstamped and FC headstamped brass, there looks to be a little band or ring. It almost looks as if some stuck a very very small wedding band in the primer pocket. Sometimes, this band looks to be real thick, sometimes it looks thinner. My RP headstamped brass doesn't have this band.

Again, I've loaded up about 200 pieces of .308 & thousands and thousands of pistol rounds....and I've yet to have problems seating primers in those.

I'm finding it almost impossible to seat primers in 99% of the LC and FC headstamped casings. The RP headstamped casings are no problem. I've picked out a handful (10 out of 50) of the "wedding ringed" casings that look like they have thinner bands, and I've seated primers in those with reasonable success.

A few questions:

1) What are those bands and what are they for?
2) Why don't the RP headstamped casings have them?
3) Why do the bands vary in size? Some look reallly thick. Others look visibly thinner.
4) In many casings, the band thickness is inconsistent; that is, the band thinner on one side than the other.
5) What do I do?

Looking forward to all of your advice. I'm going to sit tight until I hear from you all.

Military Specs require brass to be thicker and have the primers crimped. This is done to prevent case rupture and/or the primer from coming out of the case and jamming the rifle mechanism. Under battle conditions, barrels can be obstructed and cause over pressure, which might blow primers if they were not tightly crimped.

In order to load them, the crimp must be removed. There are two tools that will remove crimp by swaging the pocket, Dillon and RCBS make them.

Brass in the 223 is not always thicker because it is crimped or mil spec for that matter! Go weigh some crimped 223 WW brass. The big wt shift comes in larger calibers ie 308 and 06. This weight thing in 223 is mainly irrelevant.

They crimp primers so that they do not blow out of the case, and then the spent primer can lock up the trigger mechanism.

Is LC and FC brass considered crimped? Is that what the band-thing is? I thought I knew what crimped primer pockets is. Maybe I don't. Can someone post a pic of a military crimped primer pocket? I don't believe that my brass fits in this category. There's nothing to swage or ream, in my opinion.

I'm hoping someone out there will answer my specific questions, that I listed. What is that band-thing in the primer pocket all about?

The "band thing" is a crimp and can easily be removed with a chamfer tool and a hand drill or drill press. It does not have to be a chamfer tool made by the reloading tool makers. One from the local hardware store that is slightly larger than the crimp will work fine. It does not take a lot of effort to remove the crimp. Try a few and then seat primers to know when you got it.

Do yourself a favor, and get a Dillon super Swage, and be done with it!

They'll last several lifetimes, and I can usually get 500-600 pockets per hour swaged without hurrying. And it works on all MilSurp cases. .308, .30-06, .223, .45ACP, 9MM, etc, etc, etc. Well worth the money.

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